Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has five-year prison sentence upheld
Gabriella (L), Richard Ratcliffe, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe (R) Family handout

A 38-year-old British-Iranian woman has had her five-year jail sentence confirmed, after losing her final appeal, according to state media.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested on 3 April 2016 at Tehran airport as she was returning to the UK after a holiday with her two-year-old child. She was a project manager for Thomson Reuters Foundation.

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The decision was finalised by Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, a Tehran prosecutor according to a Mizanonline.ir report, which is linked to the country's legal system.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe's daughter Gabriella is still in Iran, being cared for by her grandparents in Tehran, after her passport was taken by authorities, according to Sky News.

Her husband Richard Ratcliffe has called her sentence a "punishment without a crime".

Iran does not recognise dual citizenship and those detained are not allowed to receive consular help.

Ratcliffe said his wife had suffered from weight and hair loss since her incarceration.

He has set up a Change.org petition highlighting her plight, saying that his wife has been transferred to an unknown location in Kerman Province, 1,000km south of Tehran.

She was placed in solitary confinement but is now being held with about 30 other women.

"To go back a month or so ago she was suicidal and on hunger strike and very, very low and at her wits' end," Ratcliffe told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

The Revolutionary Court has accused Zaghari-Ratcliffe of plotting to overthrow the Iranian regime.

Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry has taken up the case, saying it "beggars belief".

She said: "It is grotesque that a young mother should be removed from her baby to serve as a pawn in prisoner swaps.

"The Iranian government needs to drop this case and return Nazanin to her family here in Britain, and her own government needs to demand that action now."

The Foreign Office said the case would be raised by Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson with their counterparts in Iran. However, Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband is highly critical of the British government's lack of action, in what he believes is part of an ongoing diplomatic dispute between Iran and the UK.

"There are clearly things the Iranian government want from the British government," he said. "Our family have been caught up as a bargaining chip in international politics, and that is a pretty tough place to be."